The line up from last nights Pinot Gris tasting held by Canterbury Winegrowers and hosted by yours truly. Despite its current in vogue status NZ actually only has a small amount of Pinot Gris planted, about 1500 hectares nationally. And wineries are making a range of styles with varying degrees of residual sweetness that can only be confusing to consumers. What should NZ do? Surely we have an opportunity to develop some kind of niche export market as we have done with SauvB and Pinot Noir. This issue has not yet been addressed. .
Eight wines in two flights. The first four - two Kiwi wines in Yealands 08 (Marlbourough), Villa Maria 08 (Hawkes Bay/Marlborough), with Land of Fire 07 (Argentina) and Corte Giara 08 (Italy), essentially to show that the big players can all easily make a low priced fruit forward pleasant wine. No need for us to go down that route. And should we really be encouraging this style (Villas wine had a Top100 Gold). For most small producers the answer has to be a firm no.
.
.
Second flight - Greystone 08 (Waipara) - entry level to the top tier, dry but with great palate weight, Seresin 08 (Marlborough) - complex nose and palate, absolute standout wine, brilliant, Quartz Reef 07 (Otago) - tight and linear, almost like a top class chardonnay (in a good way!) and Rolly Gassman Reserve 04 (Alsace) - the chalk from the rest of the cheese, weighty, oily, moderately sweet, some secondary characteristics and fantastic length. All quality wines but all different in style too. At this level you start to see the use of natural yeasts, lees stirring, old oak fermentation and ageing, bottle maturation. These wines had TEXTURE, balance and a whole lot more going on than just fruit. Come on NZ growers and winemakers, this varietal is going to be big for us in an export sense, lets get it right.
.
Nb - 7 of the 8 wines were under screwcap and 3 of them had slight reduction issues. Cause for concern?
1 comment:
Can we do it again when I'm back!? Everybody here is talking about the up and coming varietal - the new star, the one to watch... But the down side is there are already some who say there is too much "lolly water" PG's out there.
Post a Comment